


The Masks Job

by Ayotofu



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Families of Choice, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-14
Updated: 2015-04-29
Packaged: 2018-03-22 23:21:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3747337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ayotofu/pseuds/Ayotofu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roy's in jail. Oliver needs some help in getting him out.</p><p>Or, Team Arrow meets Leverage Consulting and Assoc. and somehow all the most untrusting people in the world become friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which Oliver Asks for Help

**Author's Note:**

> Set in Leverage Season 5 and Arrow post 3x18 except Sara's not dead and Ray is not a factor. I’m assuming that Starling City is on the west coast, near Seattle (and therefore pretty close to Portland, too). Despite the numerous pairing tags, be aware that this if first and foremost a GEN story. There will be little to no romantic drama and the focus will be on the platonic friendships developing. 
> 
> Concept based on an anon ask to+the response from thebelovedsaralance on tumblr.

“Is this Nathan Ford?”

“Who’s asking? And how did you get this number?”

“My name is Oliver Queen. I need you to get my friend out of prison.”

—

“You’re the Arrow, right?” Nate asks. “Not Roy Harper. He took the fall for you and now you want to save him.”

Oliver Queen sits across the table, nursing a mug of hot tea. He doesn’t look much like the young billionaire Nate met twelve years ago, all hard lines and dignified silences. Of course, Nate thinks, he isn’t a billionaire anymore.

In the chair next to him, Sophie observes the man’s body language and facial cues for any sign of a lie. Eliot is watching their interactions from a booth. When he’d heard what the case was about, he insisted that Nate have some “extra security.”

“If Queen really is the Arrow,” Eliot had said, “then he’s dangerous. Maybe more dangerous than me. I’m not letting any of you near him alone.”

They aren’t taking any chances with this one.

“Roy’s a good kid,” Queen says, staring into his tea. “He doesn’t deserve prison, especially not for my crimes.”

Nate hmms. “Now when you say ‘my crimes,’ you’re referring to…”

“I am not responsible for the recent string of murders that I have been accused of, if that’s what you’re asking.” Queen’s eyes snap up to his and Nate remembers that even if what he’s saying is true, there are still a couple dozen other deaths that are attributed to the vigilante from the first year he was active. Normally, Nate wouldn’t be intimidated; he’d spent the past five years with Eliot Spencer for Chrissake. It wasn’t the knowledge that the man could easily reach across the table and snap his neck before Eliot could even get out of the booth that unnerved him. No, what set him on edge was remembering the stupid, shallow, spoiled brat that he’d met twelve years ago when one of Robert Queen’s IYS-insured paintings was stolen and trying to reconcile that image with those eyes. Eliot would call them killer’s eyes, and Nate has a feeling Queen would agree, but Nate has met a lot of killers and the term doesn’t quite fit either man.

He glances over at Sophie. She has a look on her face like Queen is a particularly interesting puzzle and she’s missing a few pieces, but she gives him a slight nod.

“Do you know who did, then?” Nate asks.

“Yes.” For a moment the table is silent.

“We can’t help you if you don’t tell us who we’re dealing with,” Sophie says.

“I don’t want you to help me with them; I want you to get Roy out of prison. That’s all.”

“Look,” Nate says, leaning forward and clasping his hands together, “we can’t do our job unless we know exactly what we’re up against. So unless you tell us who’s responsible, we won’t take the case.”

“Trust me,” Queen says, “the less you know about the people framing me, the safer you’ll be. They aren’t here for Roy; they don’t care about him one way or another. All you’ll have to worry about is the Starling City Police Department.”

“See, the thing is,” Nate says, “I don’t trust you. So either you tell me who they are,” Nate continues as he and Sophie stand, “or we’re done here.”

The ex-billionaire stares at the tabletop.

“Alright,” Nate says, walking away. “Having fun breaking your sidekick out of prison on your own.”

“Wait.”

Nate stops.

“That’s Eliot Spencer over there, right?” Eliot stiffens in his seat and moves to get up, but Nate waves him off.

“How do you know–”

“Do you trust him?”

“What?”

“Do you trust him?” Queen repeats.

“With my life.”

“If I went over there and told him who is framing me and why, would you trust him if he told you exactly what I’m telling you right now?”

Nate hesitates. “Yes.”

—

“The League of Assassins?”

“Yes.”

“You pissed off the League?”

“By refusing to become the next Ra’s al Ghul, yes.”

“Shit,” Eliot says, flopping back in his seat. “Shit.” He looks Queen in the eye. “I don’t want my team anywhere near that.”

“That’s why I’m only asking you to help Roy. The League isn’t interested in him. Just me. You should be safe.”

“And if we’re not?” Eliot says. Queen is silent. “Look, it’s not my decision. If it was, you’d be shit outta luck. We’re a team, and it’s gotta be a team decision.” Eliot considers this for a moment. “Well, it’s usually a team decision. Sometimes. The point is: if–if–we decide to take this job, they can’t be walking into this blind. I get that you like your secrets, I really do, but they need to know what they’re up against.”

When Queen doesn’t respond, Eliot adds, “If you don’t tell them, I will.”

For some reason, Queen smiles at that. “You sound like a friend of mine,” he explains.

Eliot looks over to where Nate and Sophie are watching and back to the vigilante uncertainly. “Was that a yes? 'Cause it sounds like one, but you were kinda unclear.”

There is definitely a spark of humor in Queen’s eyes as he rambles a little. “Yes.”

Eliot feels like he’s missing something.

—

“Uh-uh, no, nuh-uh, no way,” Hardison says. “It’s a League full of assassins. A secret group made up entirely of assassins. Assassin club. Nope. We are not getting involved. I vote no.”

Parker loves her boyfriend–really, she does–but he can be such a scaredy-cat sometimes. He’d wanted to run when that Dr. Uhaul or whatever his name was running around with the Spanish flu, too, and he screamed every time she pushed him off a building even though he was in a harness and perfectly secure.

“As I said, I’m not asking you to bring down the League. I’m not even asking you to get involved with the League at all,” their potential client whatshisface says. They’ve never had a client come to the back and pitch his case to the whole team before; going off that and the look on Eliot’s face, not unlike the scowl he’d worn whenever Damien Moreau used to come up, she’d guess that this League is pretty serious business. “All I’m asking is for you to get my friend out of prison. Normally, I’d do it myself, but with the League in town, and all the extra scrutiny I’m under…” the man trails off. “He was protecting me. And he shouldn’t have to go to jail for that. Not for me.”

Parker glances through the file the man had given them on his friend. “'Arsenal?’” She snorts. “Whose idea was that?”

The client stares at her for a moment. “I honestly don’t know.” He looks back at Nate. “I know I can’t force you to do this, and I certainly can’t pay you. What I can do is offer you protection. I’ve got a three-tour special forces veteran, at least one ex-member of the League, and the best damn hacker you’ve ever met. Also–”

“Hold up,” Hardison interrupts. “You do not have the best hacker, which I know for a fact because I’m the best damn hacker in the world.”

The man smiles. “Oh, you two would get along famously. And then she’d beat you.”

Huh, Parker thinks. This man is a lot smarter than he looks. Even if his friend does have a stupid codename. She laughs a little at the memory of it.

“I hacked the Pentagon when I was twelve!”

“She once made a supervirus so sophisticated that the NSA tracked her down to get their hands on her.” The man pauses. “Luckily for me, they got her boyfriend instead.”

“Ha!” Hardison crows in triumph. “So they caught her!”

“Only because her boyfriend went and deleted a bunch of student loans. Otherwise they would never have known.”

Oh yeah. This guy knows what he’s doing when it comes to Hardison.

“So what you’re saying is,” Nate interjects before Hardison can respond, “if we take this job, we’ll have full access to all your resources?”

The man nods. “Anything you need.”

“Are you guys up for it?” Nate asks them.

Sophie speaks first. “We’ve done more dangerous jobs before. This is just a standard prison escape. Simple.”

“It’s not even a supermax this time.” Parker scoffs. “Easy-peasy lemon-squeezy.”

“'She’s the best damn hacker’ my foot. I’m the best damn hacker. Me,” Hardison is muttering to himself. “She is so going down.”

"I’ll take that as a 'yes,’” Nate says. “Eliot? You’ve been awfully quiet.”

Eliot is staring at the file in front of him like it’s going to be taken away from him in thirty seconds and he will be tested on its contents. “I don’t like it,” he says at last. “No one’s ever taken on the League and won before. But if you’re all in, I’m coming too. Just understand that the second the League shows any interest in us, and I mean any interest, we are hauling ass out of there. Maybe get to Canada or something. We clear?”

Nate nods. “Alright guys; let’s go steal an Arsenal.”

Parker cracks up.


	2. In Which Felicity and Hardison Are Mutual Fans

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had planned on releasing one chapter on here every Tuesday originally and one every Friday on Tumblr. Then I realized that that was silly and I should just release them both on the same day. So I plan to have weekly updates on Saturday--though I make no promises for these next couple of weeks because I have finals coming up and I won't be able to devote much time or energy to this fic.
> 
> Thank you all so much for the great response to the first chapter though! I was blown away by the number of people reading and commenting and kudosing(?) and I'm so happy people are enjoying this. I honestly didn't know what to expect. I hope you all still like the second chapter! Thanks go to thebelovedsaralance on tumblr for beta'ing this chapter!

The Arrow’s secret lair is almost exactly what Hardison expected. The punching bags, weird little sparring dummies, and archery range on one side, backlit glass cases full of medieval weaponry and some of the nicest computers he’s ever seen outside of a multibillion dollar company (which, come to think of it, Queen did own once-upon-a-time) on the other. On one of the screens, some sort of algorithm is running, but he’s too far away to see what it is. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Eliot inspecting the various special arrowheads that are set up on one of the tables nearby and Parker staring at the high ceiling like she’s looking for escape routes. Sophie is apparently fascinated by the red costume while Nate stands off to the side, kinda creepily. Which, admittedly, is pretty standard for Nate.

“This is our base of operations,” Queen says. “Feel free—”

The door from the nightclub above opens, briefly letting the sounds of screaming twenty-somethings and earthshaking base into the lair before it closes behind a young blonde woman talking on the phone.

“I’ve spent the past week trying to find a way into Iron Heights, Sara. If I don’t figure something out soon, Oliver is going to…” she trails off as she catches sight of the Leverage crew. “Wow. Um, let me call you back.” She hangs up. “Oliver?” she says, smiling like she’s been stabbed and she has to pretend to be happy about it. “Can I talk to you for a moment?” 

Before Queen can respond, the woman drags him off to the other side of the room, ponytail swinging in time with her steps. He can’t hear any words, but the petite woman, in her pink dress and prescription glasses, gets right up in the very scowly, very defensive, very able-to-kill-her-with-his-bare-hands-if-he-wanted-to vigilante’s face, which definitely means she has mad props. Especially since even Eliot said the guy was dangerous.

As the argument continues, Hardison whistles. “What’s that about?”

“Did he not tell her we were coming?” Eliot says in an undertone.

“Apparently not,” Sophie says.

“It took you three years to tell your own sister, Oliver!” Hardison jumps at the woman's shout and turns to stare at the two. She blushes at the sudden attention but continues to glare at Queen, who says something to her in a low tone. Whatever he said appears to placate her enough for her to let the matter drop for now, because they both walk back over to where the Leverage crew is waiting.

“Felicity, this is Nate Ford and his crew. They’re going to help us get Roy out of prison,” Queen says when he reaches them. “Guys, this is Felicity Smoak.”

“Wait wait wait—did you just say Felicity Smoak?” Hardison says. “The Felicity Smoak? Who made a virus that gives you full access to any infected computer without the user ever knowing? That Felicity?” 

Felicity stares at him for a moment. “I have a fan?” 

“I spent a year trying to recreate it once. Never could.” He sticks his hand out and she shakes. “Alec Hardison. It’s my genuine pleasure and honor to meet you.”

“Hang on. You’re Alec Hardison?” she says. Hardison imagines that the starstruck expression on her face mirrors his own. 

“That’s right.” 

“You hacked the White House email in three days!”

“Uh huh.”

“You hacked into the Pentagon when you were twelve!”

“Damn straight.” Hardison grins.

She turns and hits Queen on the shoulder. Queen looks at her with raised eyebrows. 

“You didn’t tell me that I’d be working with Alec Hardison! He’s, like, hacker legend. And he knows who I am! If what we do wasn’t so, well, illegal, I’d brag to my mom about this.”

“Does this mean I’m forgiven?” Queen asks as he rubs his shoulder.

“Hah, not by a long shot, bucko,” she says. “Though it is a step in the right direction.”

He sighs. “Well, I’m going to go tell the others and hope that they don’t try to kill me. Mr. Ford?” he asks. “Would you like to meet your extra protection?” 

Nate (who has been disturbingly quiet this whole time) doesn’t reply immediately. “Yes,” he says after a long moment. “Yes, I think I will. Just let me talk to my team first.”

\--

“I don’t like you going out there alone,” Eliot says as soon as they congregate off to the side.

“I won’t be alone,” Nate says. He’s using one of his many absolutely infuriating tones, most in varying degrees of smug; Sophie calls this one his “I-know-exactly-what-you’re-getting-at-and-I-agree-with-you-but-I-still-want-to-seem-smarter-so-I’m-going-to-make-you-work-at-figuring-out-what-I-mean-even-though-telling-you-would-be-so-much-simpler” voice. She can’t blame the rest of the team for falling for it as often as they do, though; she has trouble distinguishing his tones sometimes and she’s the best grifter in the world.

“Queen and his people don’t count yet; I don’t know if I trust them,” Eliot argues.  
“I know. That’s why you’re coming with me.”

“That’s—oh.” Eliot blinks in surprise. “Why didn’t you just say that? Of course: because you’re Nate,” Eliot answers his own question before Nate can respond.

“And the rest of us?” Parker asks.

“Stay here. Do some recon. Find out what you can about the prison and these people we’re going to be working with. Try asking Ms. Smoak; she and Hardison seem to be getting along nicely.”

Hardison holds up his hands defensively. “Look, she’s one of the most brilliant coders-slash-hacker in the history of computers. Of course we get along. You make it sound like I got a crush on her or something.”

Next to him, Parker twitches. If she wasn’t worried about that beforehand, Sophie thinks, then she certainly is now.

“Besides,” Hardison continues, unaware of the foot he is slowly shoving into his mouth, “she had some serious bedroom eyes for Queen. You could not pay me to get involved in that.”

Parker grits her teeth into a smile and clenches her fist.

“Also,” Sophie interjects in an attempt to salvage their relationship, “because you’ve got a beautiful and wonderful girlfriend already, right?”

“Well yeah, I just sorta figured that was a given,” Hardison says. He might be oblivious, but Sophie can’t help but admire his sincerity. Some other men she knows could take notes.

“Alright,” Nate says, “everybody good?” They nod. “Alright, we’ll rendezvous here tonight. Come on Eliot; we’ve got to go meet up with some of the most dangerous people in the world for our own protection." 

Ah yes. That's another thing he does that she absolutely hates—he makes her worry more than any man or woman should have a right to.

\--

Felicity remembers how excited Barry was last year when he learned that he was working the same case as the vigilante; she imagines that it must’ve felt something like what she’s feeling right now, only she’s feeling it at least a hundred times stronger. Plus, as an added bonus, she didn’t meet Alec Hardison because she needed to save his life after he’d been poisoned and he didn’t try to strangle her.

She’s still furious at Oliver for not telling them about this—because hello? It wasn’t just his secret anymore—but she’s decided to focus on the positive right now since Oliver isn’t here for her to glare at anymore.

(“Felicity, I’ve met Nate Ford before. And I’ve heard stories about his crew,” Oliver had said. “There was no way that he hadn’t already figured it out based on the news. And they’re very good at what they do. I just figured we could use a little help.” 

“And I’m glad you’ve finally reached a point of emotional maturity where you realize that it’s okay to ask for help,” she’d said, “but you should’ve told us. We deserved to know.”)

Focus on the positives. Alec Hardison is here, in the flesh. Even though he went about it with secrecy and lies, Oliver did at least recognize that he couldn't do it alone and reached out. Which is progress. And he apologized without needing several hours to realize he'd dicked up.

“Wow,” she muses aloud, “my standards for good news have reeeeeeeally fallen lately.”

She looks over to where Alec Hardison and the two women (whose names she does not know because Oliver forgot to mention them and oh look the anger's back) are huddled up and discussing--something. Hopefully how they are going to get Roy out of prison 'cause damn does she miss that kid. It's only been a week and already the foundry feels emptier. The police confiscated the Arrow's gear when they arrested Roy, but his costume is still on display by her computers. She stares at it sometimes now, when she starts losing hope, to remind her that she had people to save too.

One of the women, who has dark hair and a lilting British accent, breaks off from the huddle and approaches her. “Ms. Smoak? I'm Sophie Devereaux. It's a pleasure to meet you.”

“It's a pleasure to meet you as well, Ms. Devereaux.” She doesn't request that Sophie Devereaux call her “Felicity” like she usually would. She gets the feeling that their relationship is still too tentative for single names. They are neither friendly enough for “Sophie” and “Felicity” nor are they tense enough for “Devereaux” and “Smoak”.

“What can you tell us about the security at Iron Heights Prison, Ms. Smoak?”

As she gives them a rundown of what she's learned so far, she hopes that Oliver knows what he's doing, for all their sakes.


	3. In Which Many Things Are Set in Motion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is late; as I said, finals are here and I'm dying. I'm also a little nervous about this chapter. Things start happening rather than just being talked about. There are hints of an actual, like, plot instead of me just shoving all these characters in one room and letting stuff happen. Scary things. Hope you all like!

Thea takes a long sip of red wine at the bar, pointedly avoiding the couch where Malcolm Dickhead Merlyn, mass murderer and the World’s Worst Father™, had recuperated after being tortured by the League. She doesn’t regret turning him over to the League; she regrets everything that came out of it—people dying, Oliver being hunted, Roy in jail—but she feels no shame or guilt for her actual intentions. She wonders if she would feel differently if he’d actually died, but she doesn’t think she would.

Now he’s stuck in a cell next to Slade Wilson and some dude with boomerangs. She doesn’t know how she feels about that.

“You know, I’m the only person in my family who has neither killed nor been killed,” she tells the couch without looking at it. “If that trend holds out, I think I’d rather be a killer than a victim.”

The doorknob turns and three sets of footsteps enter. “Thea?” her brother calls. “You home?”

“Ollie! You’re back!” She jumps off the barstool and goes to hug him. The two men behind him look on dispassionately. “Who’re your friends?”

“Thea, this is Nathan Ford and Eliot Spencer.”

“Nathan Ford?” she says, raising an eyebrow at him. “The insurance investigator?”

“How on earth do you remember that? You were eight.” Thea shrugs. The name had come up when she did research on her dad’s art collection a few years later, but she figures there’s no harm in letting Oliver think she has a wicked good memory. Oliver doesn’t press her. “Well, anyway, he’s not an insurance investigator anymore. Now he runs a team of Robin Hood-type criminals and they’re gonna help us get Roy out of prison.”

“Uh-huh,” Thea says. She smiles at Oliver, pulling her lips tight across her face. “And they know the, um, big green secret?” Behind him, the long-haired man—Eliot Spencer, apparently—mutters something to Ford that sounds a lot like “Here we go again.” Thea ignores them.

“Trust me Thea, Ford had already figured it out before I went to see him.” He sighs. “And yes, I should have brought it up with all of you first anyway. I made a mistake, and I’m sorry.”

For a moment, Thea can’t believe what she’s hearing. “Someone’s already yelled at you for this, haven’t they? Was it Diggle? No,” she cuts off his response. “It was Felicity this time, right? She totally stole my thunder!”

Oliver ignores her questions, which is as good as a yes. “I’m taking Mr. Ford and Mr. Spencer here around to meet the people they’ll be working with.”

“Wait a minute,” Ford says. “We’re going to be working with your little sister? On a prison break?”

“If she wants to.”

“You mean it?” Thea asks, stunned. Usually Oliver is painfully overprotective of her; she’d already been preparing an argument for why she should be allowed to help and planning how to be involved anyway when he inevitably said no.

“SCPD’s all over me right now, so I’m fairly handicapped, and we need all the help we can get. And,” he says, looking her straight in the eye, “I know you can take care of yourself. You don’t need me to protect you.”

This time, her smile is genuine.

“Plus,” he continues, “is there any way you’d let me keep you out of this?”

Her smile widens. “Not a chance.”

“Not to break up a touching family moment,” Ford says, and somehow he actually sounds like he means it, “but what is your sister going to do, exactly?”

“She’s a fighter,” Spencer says, startling her. She’d almost forgotten he was there, which, now that she thinks of it, was probably the idea. “You can see it in how she holds herself. Tell me something, Queen,” he says to Oliver, “do you ever hang out with any normal people? Like at all?”

Thea snorts into surprised laughter at the look of confusion on Ollie’s face. When he opens his mouth to respond, she cuts him off. “Captain Lance and Laurel do not count.”

He closes his mouth, brighter red than she’s seen him since before he got on the Queen’s Gambit. “Like you’re any better!”

She stops laughing. “Oh my god you’re right. We’re both pathetic losers with absolutely no life.” There’s a moment of awkward silence before the giggles bubble up again, against her will and suddenly Oliver’s laughing too, though he’s a bit more reserved and bites his bottom lip to stifle some of it. In her peripheral vision, Spencer is giving Ford a look that seems to say “See? This is what happens” (she’s not sure why) which just makes her laugh harder.

When they’ve calmed down, Oliver says, “We’ve got to go visit the others now. Would you rather stay here, come with us, or go to the foundry and give Felicity and the rest of Mr. Ford’s team a hand?”

“Foundry,” she says. She’s ready to do something, to finally be able to help someone she loves; she’s not gonna waste any more time. “Nice meeting you,” she says to Ford and Spencer as she grabs her keys and breezes out the door.

“Nice meeting you… too…” she hears a slightly country voice say as the door closes behind her. She thinks she could really like this Eliot Spencer guy.

\--

“Woah. Did you program this yourself?” Hardison stares at the facial recognition program running on one of the screens (there are at least five of them, big and bright and fancy). It’s even more sophisticated than the one he uses and is apparently accessing every single traffic and security camera in Starling City.

“Oh, no, I didn’t. Well, I mean, I guess I did. Sort of.” Felicity takes a deep breath and counts down three, two, one on her fingers. “What I mean to say is that I may have hacked into the FBI… and Interpol… and a few other agencies and mashed their facial rec programs and databases into one super-program. With some of my own personal touches.”

“Nice,” he says. He gestures toward the hand-drawn picture that the system is searching for. “Who’s this unlucky fellow?”

“Ra’s al Ghul. It’s a long shot, but maybe if we can find him…”

“Hold up. Ra’s al Ghul? The big scary leader of the big scary League full of big scary assassins? The guy who wants to make Queen his apprentice or something and is killing people left and right to get that done? That Ra’s al Ghul?” Hardison’s voice climbs steadily higher as he speaks. Something about seeing the man’s face, even if it was just a sketch, sets him on edge. Why had he agreed to this again? Is professional pride really worth death-by-assassin?

Felicity frowns in annoyance at the screen. “That’s the one.”

And Felicity seems more concerned that she hasn’t found him yet than that he could and would kill her in seconds if she did. In some of his comic books, there’s a fictional element called adamantium—supposedly the strongest metal in the world. If it exists anywhere in reality, he thinks, they’d surely find it in Felicity Smoak’s nervous system.

“Hardison?” Parker’s voice crackles over the earbud. She and Sophie had left to go do some in-person recon and hopefully get them some access to the prison network. (“They used to have it all on the grid,” Felicity had said, “but a certain someone kept hacking in whenever they lost a prisoner—which is disturbingly common, might I add—so they upped their cyber security. Took everything offline, even the blueprints.”) “We’re at the prison.”

He coughs self-consciously. “What do y’all see?”

“They’ve got the basics at the entrance: metal detectors, pat downs, IDs,” Parker begins listing off. “For guards, they match the face to the ID. The guards also have keycards that open the main gate, maybe more inside but I can’t see anything else from here.”

“There’s a check-in window for visitors,” Sophie adds. “They don’t let anyone go back until whoever they’re here to see agrees to see them, and a guard escorts them the whole way.”

So they aren’t getting in the main entrance just yet; the only person they know is in there is Roy Harper and according to Felicity the only visitor he’s allowed at the moment is his lawyer. “Are there any other access points you can see, Parker?”

“Not from down here. Vents are too small and the windows are all blocked. There might be something on the roof but I’d need a better vantage point; I’ll come back tonight and check it out. But even if there is a skylight or something, I don’t want to go in there blind.”

“So what you’re saying is,” Felicity pipes up, “we need a guard.”

“Yes, and Roy's lawyer,” Sophie says. “We need to get in to see him.”

Felicity laughs. “Believe me, that won’t be a problem.”

\--

Lyla Michaels has been having a rough go of it lately.

A new baby and a high-stress job were more than enough for most people on their own. Add to that the fact that her honeymoon wasn’t exactly the stress-reliever she’d hoped it would be—too many explosions and emotionally-complicated deaths—and quitting her job isn’t as surprising a move as it felt at the time. She always knew that ARGUS crossed a lot of lines in the name of “security”, and she’d crossed quite a few of them herself. What happened with Floyd Lawton wasn’t even the worst, objectively speaking (she’s put bombs in people’s heads, she’s detonated bombs in people’s heads), but it was (hopefully) the last.

Still, Lyla Michaels is not and never was a “sit-on-the-sidelines” kind of woman. She quit ARGUS to be better; if for right now that means being a better mother and staying at her sister’s place until this League of Assassins business finished, then so be it. But she knows that soon enough she’ll be back out there, maybe with a less dangerous, less morally-gray job; she’s just not stay-at-home material. Even now, she’s been helping John, Felicity, and Sara figure out a way into Iron Heights to extract Roy Harper.

She just didn’t expect to be standing in front of Amanda Waller a scant few weeks after quitting.

“Agent Michaels,” Waller says from the hallway. She’s dressed, as always, in a perfectly fitted skirt suit with her hair pulled back in a tight bun. “May I come in?”

“That depends on why you’re here, Waller,” Lyla says. “And it’s Ms. Michaels now. I’m not your agent.”

“It’s not something that should be discussed in the doorway.”

Lyla purses her lips. “Of course it isn’t.” She walks back into the apartment. Waller follows and closes the door behind her. “My sister will be back from the store soon.”

“I know, that’s why I’ll make this quick.” Waller stands in the center of the room like it’s the Ops Center back at ARGUS. “We need you to come back in.”

“I figured as much. So why me? Why not an agent?”

“Do you honestly think I’d be here if I had another choice?” Waller says, eyes narrowed. “ARGUS has been compromised; if I’m right about this, the scale of what’s about to come is much too large for one person and right now you’re the only one I can trust. If you decide to take the job, come to this address at 2200 hours tomorrow night.” She hands Lyla a folded piece of paper. “I’ll tell you the rest there.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then you can explain to your new family why you let thousands of people die for the sake of your stubbornness and pride.”

Then she leaves, just as suddenly as she’d come. Sara starts crying in the back room. Lyla looks down at the paper in her hand. “Damn it,” she says. Waller knows her too damn well. She wishes she could understand her old boss half as much, but the head of ARGUS remains as enigmatic as ever.

“Shhh,” she murmurs to her weeping daughter, pulling her out of her crib. She rocks the baby against her chest. “Mommy’s right here. Mommy’s got you. Everything is alright. It’s all gonna be okay.”


End file.
